Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Science/2024 January 10

= January 10 =

Neurotransmitters
Is there a neurotransmitter which has the opposite effect of dopamine and/or suppresses the release of dopamine? Also, is oxytocin synergetic with or antagonistic to dopamine, or neither? 2601:646:8080:FC40:3982:CA81:D9FD:A932 (talk) 03:41, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Monoamine oxidase (MOA) break down dopamine and therefore has sort of the opposite effect by reducing dopamine levels. --CometVolcano (talk) 14:59, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thinking in that same direction, there are a bunch of factors that can upregulate the dopamine transporter, which would increase dopamine reuptake (clearing it from the synapse). DMacks (talk) 22:40, 13 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks, but I was asking specifically about neurotransmitters, not enzymes. 2601:646:8080:FC40:B181:27B1:C710:220B (talk) 00:45, 16 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Melatonin, according to dopamine antagonist. Abductive  (reasoning) 17:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks! 2601:646:8080:FC40:B181:27B1:C710:220B (talk) 03:43, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Dopamine opposes the action of dopamine, in two senses! Firstly, dopamine acts at both D1 and D2 receptors, and the intracellular signalling pathways mediated by each generally oppose one another; the former leads to an increase in cAMP, and the latter to a decrease. Secondly, D2 receptors on synaptic nerve terminals act to suppress neurotransmitter release. So, dopamine suppresses its own released (auto-inhibition). This all points to that fact that, for most neurotransmitters (other than the rather boring glutamate and GABA), it doesn't make sense to think of the function of a neurotransmitter without reference to the receptors and signalling pathways they relate to. Klbrain (talk) 11:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * That's just an ordinary case of negative feedback (which is normal in all living systems) -- I was asking about neurotransmitters which actually decrease the amount of dopamine signalling! 2601:646:8080:FC40:0:0:0:AF1A (talk) 13:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Sterile Surgery
Joseph Lister (and others) had pretty much proven that sterile techniques during surgery and childbirth saved lives. But he and the others met fierce resistance. In 1873 The Lancet, the leading medical journal, disparaged Lister and recommended his procedures not be followed. Who edited The Lancet at that time? Any ideas of his/its motivation--after all, rich people and their babies died of infections too. 24.72.82.173 (talk) 22:58, 10 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I saw the name Richard Beverly Cole listed at a few places online, which lead me to R. Beverly Cole. Sure enough, the article states: "In 1890, Cole registered his opposition to antiseptic injections in obstetrics before the obstetric committee of the Medical Society of the State of California, reasoning that deliveries had long been accomplished before the introduction of antisepsis." This was 17 years later, in 1890. Guy sounds pretty stubborn! Beach drifter (talk) 00:56, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Cole never edited The Lancet. DuncanHill (talk) 01:25, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I see now that the picture I was looking at was of The Western Lancet - https://www.flipkart.com/western-lancet-1873-vol-2-monthly-journal-devoted-medicine-surgery-collateral-sciences-classic-reprint/p/itm39c65d42bf025 Beach drifter (talk) 01:45, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The Lancet in 1873 was edited by T. H. Wakley and James G. Wakley. DuncanHill (talk) 01:23, 11 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Slightly unrelated, I remember reading about how the innovation of anesthesia was spread to faraway continents in, say, two years, while disinfection took decades. According to this source, the reason was that anesthesia has a very visible benefit for both the surgeon and the patient, but disinfection does not. --Error (talk) 09:46, 12 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Resistance to Lister's methods seems to fall into two camps; one being those who saw nothing wrong with traditional techniques:
 * At the 1869 meeting of the British Medical Association in Leeds, the local senior surgeon Thomas Nunneley (1809–1870) launched a violent attack upon antisepsis. He outed himself as ultra-conservative, not just by denying the germ-theory of wound infections but also by misquoting the experience of local colleagues who had had some success with Lister’s methods. As Lister pointed out in his reply in the BMJ, Nunneley ‘dogmatically oppose[s] a treatment which he so little understands and which, by his own admission, he has not tried’.
 * The other group, such as Lawson Tait, were more enlightened and had acheived considerable improvements by means of other chemicals or simple hygene with soap and water; These approaches were also much less cumbersome, expensive and time-consuming than antisepsis using carbolic acid sprays, and thus better suited to busy practitioners and in emergency cases... Statistics were used to suggest that cleanliness was more successful than Listerism in preventing death.
 * See Statistics and the British controversy about the effects of Joseph Lister’s system of antisepsis for surgery, 1867–1890. Alansplodge (talk) 12:12, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * In Europe the dispute turned ugly Ignaz Semmelweis. 2A02:C7B:11B:9000:102:E620:5DF:9CB1 (talk) 15:42, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Note that there is a difference between antiseptic procedures and aseptic procedures. Lister invented the former. It involves the use of fairly aggressive disinfecting agents (in Lister's case carbolic acid), with corresponding side effects. It was a big step forward, but under most circumstances, modern procedures are aseptic, i.e. we sterilise the patient, tools, and surgeon, and try to avoid the introduction of germs to begin with. Anti-septic procedures are a fall-back if asepsis fails or cannot be guaranteed. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 23:57, 18 January 2024 (UTC)